Brain Health
How Sugar Damages Your Brain: Lessons from Fruit Flies
Fruit fly research reveals how excess sugar makes brain cells insulin resistant and impairs the clearance of cellular debris—a mechanism linked to neurodegeneration.
Brain Health
Fruit fly research reveals how excess sugar makes brain cells insulin resistant and impairs the clearance of cellular debris—a mechanism linked to neurodegeneration.
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If researchers want to understand what goes wrong in humans, they often look to other organisms.
This approach works because many signaling pathways are evolutionarily conserved. Insects, animals, fungi, algae, plants—they all share the same single-celled ancestor.
This ensures that the structure of our cells is very similar—we all belong to what are called eukaryotes.
Why is it legitimate to use animals or even single-celled eukaryotes like yeast for basic research? The answer is straightforward.
In short: we can learn more about our own cells and ourselves through these organisms.
One popular research organism is the fruit fly, scientifically known as Drosophila melanogaster. It's particularly easy to work with ;-)
To learn more about Alzheimer's disease and neurodegeneration in humans, researchers recently used the fruit fly as a model organism in a current study.
The researchers note: Much of what we find in humans at high levels of complexity can be found in an analogous, though less complex, form in Drosophila.
Like us, the fruit fly becomes sick from too much sugar in its diet. At least, that's what this recent research suggests.
Here's how it works: In the experiments, fruit flies are allowed to snack on sweets all day—well, that's a joke. They're actually given pure table sugar.
Soon after, the flies become insulin resistant. Just like us. Notably, this also happens in the brains of these animals.
There, researchers find cells very similar to our glial cells. Glial cells support actual nerve cells. They feed our nervous system and clean up waste (phagocytosis).
The key finding from the researchers: sugar makes glial cells insulin resistant. They then don't function well anymore and fail to remove debris from the brain.
«We found that a high-sugar, obesity-inducing diet impairs glial phagocytic function and delays the clearance of neuronal waste.»
The researchers explain why this matters for us humans:
«Defects in glial phagocytic function are a hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases, as delayed removal of neuronal debris can lead to inflammation, neuronal death, and poor recovery of the nervous system.»
There we have it again. Our supposedly wonderful modern diet sabotages our body's functions right down to the cellular level. And we keep wondering why.
Are you also a sugar-fattened fruit fly?
Mroj Alassaf and Rajan, A. (2023). Diet-induced glial insulin resistance impairs the clearance of neuronal debris in Drosophila brain. PLOS Biology, 21(11), pp.e3002359–e3002359. doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002359.
